


Talismans

by aeli_kindara



Series: Scaffolding 'Verse [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Lyall Lupin's A+ Parenting, M/M, Marauders After Hogwarts, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 17:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13128462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Sirius knows Remus has been getting threats from Death Eaters; he hasn't seen it until now.





	Talismans

Sirius is humming to himself as he makes his way up the stairs. Remus’s flat is on the fourth floor of a shoddy old building, with mildewed walls and the occasional odd smell, but Sirius doesn’t mind, really; it’s no worse than his own place. And there’s the ladder up to the roof, where they can sit and watch the stars, or sometimes just the smog; and Sirius has a bottle of wine in his grocery bag, and a loaf of bread from that bakery Remus likes, and nowhere to be in the morning.

At first, the men he brushes by on the stairs don’t strike him as especially odd. There’s three of them, all with a gaunt, half-wild, sunken-cheeked look about them, and the largest gives Sirius a distinctly creepy grin as he passes, exposing pointed yellow teeth. But this is a dirt cheap apartment building in Muggle London, and you meet odd types on the stairs, sometimes. Remus has his place well enough warded to fend off the drug-addled, or the occasional criminal element. And if they had an odd smell about them, a smell that twitches at some half-buried thread of canine memory, well… they look like the type that might sleep in dumpsters from time to time, so it shouldn’t surprise him.

It’s not until the next landing that Sirius stops dead, realizing what has his skin prickling. Those men weren’t wearing Muggle clothes. Those men were wearing cloaks.

He takes the last flight of stairs three at a time, and skids to a halt on the landing outside Remus’s door. It’s dark up here, and his eyes are still blinking away the harsh light of the stairwell below, so it takes him an instant to perceive that the shadow against the far wall is darker than the other shadows, that it’s in the shape of a huddled human body, that it’s Remus Lupin.

“Moony!” He drops the bag, heart in his throat, falling to his knees next to Remus. But along with the fear, relief surges in his chest, because Remus isn’t slumped like the unconscious or the dead. He’s sitting upright, back against the wall, arms crossed over his knees, head tilted back and eyes closed. They flicker open as Sirius falls to his knees beside him. “Are you all right? What happened, who were they?” His hands are light but frantic, touching Remus’s arms, his chest, his face. His thumb brushes something hot and wet from Remus’s cheek, and panic rises in him for a moment, thinking it’s blood. Then he gets a proper look at Remus’s face and sees that he’s crying.

Sirius freezes. His heart seems to be thundering wildly in his throat. He’s never — he’s _never_ seen Remus cry, not in eight years. Not from pain or joy or sadness or relief, not when his friends uncovered his secret, not when Sirius’s stupid prank almost killed him. It’s something he’s known forever, accepted as fixed and immutable as the stars. Remus doesn’t cry.

“Moony?” he says, and feels the uncertainty in his own voice, quavering.

Remus blinks: once, twice. There’s a horrible blankness in his face, and Sirius thinks suddenly of James, after McGonagall told him his parents were dead, murdered by Death Eaters, gone. It’s the look of someone whose world has vanished around him.

“Moony,” Sirius whispers again, “please, just — tell me if you’re hurt, all right?”

Remus blinks a third time. “I’m not hurt,” he says, and his voice sounds strangely level, normal, as if nothing has happened at all.

“All right,” says Sirius, relief warring with alarm in his brain, “all right, let’s — let’s get you inside, and you can tell me what happened. All right? I’ll — make some tea, ok?”

Remus nods stiffly, and Sirius draws back, unsure if he should help Remus to his feet. But Remus rises on his own, carefully, unfolding his limbs with the tentative precision of someone who has nearly forgotten he has them. Sirius stands a pace back, feeling useless and strange, unable to step forward, to help, to touch.

They stare at each other for a moment. Then Remus drops his eyes abruptly, fumbles in his pocket for his key. His hands don’t shake as he turns it in the lock, and Sirius only barely remembers to collect his fallen groceries before following him inside.

Remus locks the door behind them before sinking wordlessly into the sagging couch. It’s Sirius who flicks the switch on the light and moves across the floor to the range, watching Remus from the corner of his eye while filling a pot with water.

Remus is staring, blankly, across the room — not down at his feet, but not quite up at Sirius either, just at some vague point on the floor between them. His hands, so steady on the lock, are shaking now, just slightly. In the light, Sirius can see that he wasn’t wrong, entirely — there’s an angry red line across Remus’s left cheek, and another down the side of his neck and across his collarbone. His shirt’s been torn open at the shoulder, and Sirius can see where the thin line of red crosses those faint old scars, the ones you almost don’t see unless you know to look. The ones from Before.

He dumps several spoonfuls of sugar into Remus’s mug of tea, and adds some cream for himself. There’s room next to Remus on the couch, but he sits instead on the floor in front of him, right in the spot Remus has been staring at. Remus starts, a little, and Sirius reaches out, gently, to wrap his long fingers around the mug. Remus raises it automatically to his lips.

“Who were they?” Sirius asks, as quietly as he knows how.

Remus shudders, and keeps the mug to his face, as if grateful for something to hide behind, no matter how inadequate.

“Death Eaters?” Sirius presses, because he can’t help it, he _needs_ to know, needs to know what they’ve done to his Moony.

Remus winces, and his voice, when he speaks, is hoarse. “I don’t think so,” he says. “Not _per se_. I don’t think — Voldemort — welcomes… them. Into his inner circle.” He winces again, stumbling over the words. “But they’re working for him."

“Werewolves,” says Sirius, hating himself, needing to confirm.

Remus’s mouth twists. “Yes,” he says.

Sirius feels his gut twist. He knows that there have been Death Eaters at Remus, a couple of times, threatening to tell his secret. Snape’s friends, mostly — people they went to school with. They’ve lost Remus a couple jobs already, trying to blackmail him into joining Voldemort’s side. It’s been awful, but it’s seemed stupid, too. Like a schoolboy hatred taken overboard. Snape’s vendetta. It’s made Sirius shake with fury, but it hasn’t seemed _real_ , not life-and-death real. It does now.

“They’re after you to join them,” he says, hating himself, hating himself more than he ever has in his life, except for the hundreds of other times he’s let Moony down.

“Yes,” says Remus again, and something in Sirius breaks.

“What,” he says, and he feels tears on his own cheeks now, “what did they do to you, Moony, you’re hurt, don’t tell me you’re not. Please,” he says, begging, shameless, “just talk to me, please.”

Remus opens his mouth, then closes it again. Both of his hands are tight on the mug, but his shoulders are shaking, and his voice when he speaks is rough. “I,” he tries, then brushes a furious hand across his face, and Sirius sees that there are tears there again, spilling from his red-rimmed eyes. “I _can’t_ ,” he says, and his voice cracks. “I — God, Sirius, I’m trying, it’s so stupid, I — they didn’t _do_ anything to me, not really, I just — I —” 

Sirius knocks his own mug of tea over, in his scramble to Remus’s side, but Remus doesn’t seem to notice, so Sirius just takes him in his arms — a little awkwardly, all elbows and angles, but Remus sinks against him, and his shaking seems to quiet, as Sirius strokes his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs against his neck, after a few moments. “It’s stupid, really. I shouldn’t — care.” His voice breaks again on the word, and Sirius clutches him tighter.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs. “I don’t care if it’s stupid. I care about you. You can tell me when you’re ready, okay? I just — just tell me if you need anything, all right? I just need to know you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” says Remus, automatically, and pulls away a little, lifting his face to meet Sirius’s eyes. There’s something wild and desperate in his face, measured, as Remus always is, but desperate just the same. “Padfoot — you’ve been studying Legilimency,” he says.

Sirius stills. He has, with Dumbledore, not that he likes it much, but Dumbledore thinks it might be useful, if he ever gets a chance to get close to Regulus again. “Yeah,” he says, uncertainly. Does Remus think someone’s invaded his mind? It seems impossible that Remus, inscrutable, guarded Remus, would let anyone past his defenses.

“Can’t you just,” says Remus, and there’s a note of pleading in his voice. “If — if you want to, can’t you just — and — ?”

Sirius feels a strange rush of emotion: shock, at what Remus is asking of him, and discomfort, and a strange squirming pleasure at the idea that Remus trusts him this much, would let him into his very thoughts. Remus, who has _always_ had secrets, always held something of himself in reserve.

“Only if you want me to,” he says, as quietly, as seriously as he can. “Only if you’re _sure_.”

Remus hesitates the barest instant, then nods, and raises his eyes to meet Sirius’s. He looks sick. He looks desperate. Sirius hesitates.

“I’m sure,” Remus whispers, and Sirius takes a deep breath, and speaks the spell in his mind.

A rush of images assaults him. It’s never been this chaotic, the times he’s done it before — with James and Dumbledore, practicing, even with prisoners or victims of the Imperius Curse, trying to discover what they know. It’s chaotic, he realizes, because Remus’s own thoughts are chaotic, and because they have a wild, slippery power of their own, one he can’t harness to show him what he wants.

But — well, it’s Remus, and he trusts Remus. He takes a deep breath and plunges deeper into the whirl of images.

Remus, climbing the stairs slowly, the end of a long day. He catches a whiff of weariness, and of gladness, because Padfoot will be here soon — strange, to feel himself reflected, so warmly, in Remus’s own mind. Then a disjunct — his stomach lurches — and it’s Remus rounding the corner onto his own landing. All three men are standing there, arrayed between Remus and the door. They’ve been talking amongst themselves; they straighten when he appears. Four pairs of nostrils flare. Scenting each other. Remus’s hand glides silently toward his wand, but his shoulders do not twitch. His face is a mask.

The big werewolf laughs. At the same moment — _before_ it, really, so imperceptibly that Sirius almost doesn’t catch it — the two men at his sides shift forward, menacing. “Keep your hand away from your wand, boy,” says the big one. “We’re only here to talk.”

Remus stills. Sirius may have barely caught the werewolves’ movement, the implied threat, but Remus hasn’t missed a thing. “And if I don’t want to talk?” he asks, levelly, as calm as if he’s ordering a sandwich.

The big man’s smile broadens. “I assure you,” he says, “we’ll only take a minute of your time.”

Remus is as still as if he’s made of marble. His hand hasn’t drifted any closer to his wand, but it hasn’t moved away either. “Fine,” he says. “Talk.”

The man shifts forward, for the first time, and Sirius realizes he’s been leaning against the wall. Now, he moves between his two henchmen, looming over Remus, who doesn’t give an inch. “My name’s Greyback,” he says, extending a hand. “Fenrir Greyback. That’s Cormac on my left, and Gerhardt on my right. Gerhardt’s from Germany — doesn’t speak much English, I’m afraid. He’s come to be part of the project we’re working on. We’d like you to join us.”

Remus says nothing. Greyback’s hand hangs in the air between them. After a moment, he lets it fall.

“Not very polite,” says the one named Cormac. He has sandy blonde hair, and a high voice, with a little bit of a wolf’s whine to it. “Not giving us your name, when we’ve given you ours.” He giggles. It makes him look a little mad.

“You know my name,” says Remus.

Greyback’s eyes glitter oddly in the darkness. “Of course,” he says, smoothly. “Heard about you from some of your school friends, didn’t we? They thought you’d be a prime candidate, for what we’re trying to do.”

Remus’s eyes give their own little flash, sudden and unreadable. “And what is that, exactly?” he asks.

“Simple,” says Greyback, leering. “Make a better world for our kind. A world where we don’t have to hide what we are. Where we’re respected as we ought to be. You want that, don’t you?”

For a moment, Remus doesn’t speak. Then he says: “Greyback, wasn’t it?”

Greyback nods, grin widening. Sirius realizes, suddenly, horribly, that his teeth are actually filed into points, wicked, evil-looking points, the kind for burying in someone’s neck.

“Well,” says Remus, and for the first time, Sirius can hear a faint trembling in his voice, almost imperceptible. “I’ve heard of you, you see. Of some of the things you’ve done. And I’m not sure I want to live in your version of a — ah — better world. I’m afraid I’ll have to turn down your offer.”

“ _I’m afraid I’ll ‘ave to turn down your offer,”_ sneers Cormac, and spits on the floor. “‘E thinks ‘e’s better than us, Greyback. Goin’ to that fancy school, suckin’ up to that Dumbledore — ’e fancies ‘imself a _gentleman werewolf._ Thinks wizards are ‘is _friends_.” He spits again. “They’ll abandon you, boy, soon as they find out what you are. ‘Cept the Dark Lord. ‘E _wants_ werewolves on ‘is side.”

“My friends know what I am,” says Remus quietly. “It’s _your_ friends who’ve been turning me out of every job.”

Cormac opens his mouth again, but Greyback speaks over him. “That can end,” he says quietly. “Join us, and you won’t need those paltry jobs anyway. As for Cormac —” He shrugs. “If he’s bitter, can you blame him? Our kind has suffered much, alone in a world run by wizards. But we can change that, if we band together.”

“To what?” asks Remus, very quietly, but his voice isn’t shaking anymore. “To a world where werewolves run rampant every full moon, as you do? To one where innocent men and women are bitten — are killed, or turned? Do you truly wish to inflict this suffering on other living souls?” His eyes are bright, and his voice is still quiet, but strong, impassioned. He looks at Cormac, then at the silent Gerhardt. “Is that really, _truly_ what you want?”

There’s an instant of utter silence. Then Greyback throws back his head, and laughs.

It’s a sudden, grating sound, loud in the quiet of the stairwell, and seems to go on far too long. At last, Greyback straightens, theatrically wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “Remus Lupin,” he says, stepping forward again, looming over Remus. “Lyall’s little boy. You’ve got the look of him, about the face. Few more scars than he does, though, don’t you?” He reaches up to a run a thumb across the line on Remus’s cheek. His nails, too, are filed to points, and black with grime.

“Take your hands off me,” says Remus, quietly.

Greyback’s eyes glitter, and his fingers tighten, gripping Remus’s chin.

Several things happen very fast. Remus moves for his wand. In an instant, the two henchmen have him by the shoulders and slammed backward, head cracking against the wall. His wand spins uselessly to the floor. Greyback steps over it, laughing again, but low this time, and softly. “Remus Lupin,” he repeats, cupping his face again in his grimy hand. Remus struggles, throws his weight against his captors, but for once in his life, his unexpected strength can do nothing — these are werewolves, too. Greyback has a mad smile on his face. He runs his thumb up Remus’s cheek, then down again, but turns it, the point cutting into his skin. “I used to know your father, did you know that? He didn’t have a very high opinion of me, though. Recognized me for what I was, when everyone else in the Ministry thought I was just some Muggle tramp. Clever man, your father, isn’t he? Certainly seemed to know what he was talking about when it came to _werewolves_ . What was it… ah, yes. _Soulless_ , I think he said. _Evil. Deserving nothing but death._ ” A drop of blood trickles down Remus’s cheek. He continues to struggle, lips a thin line.

“Of course,” continues Greyback, as his thumb traces lower, down Remus’s neck now, “of course, I got the last laugh, didn’t I? I remember you, Remus Lupin. Where was it… ah.” His thumbnail slices through the collar of Remus’s shirt in a rip of parting cotton, then drags across his collarbone, tearing the shirt open wider. “Ah, yes, I remember. I confess, Remus Lupin — I didn’t expect you to survive. It certainly wasn’t in my plan. A few inches to the left, eh?” There’s a mad delight in his eyes as he surveys the scars on Remus’s bare shoulder, exposed now, pale in the dim light of the landing. “But Lyall got the better of me once again — drove me off. I was furious about it in the morning, I’ll admit. But this is so much better, isn’t it? Instead of dying — you lived, and Lyall Lupin was left to raise a werewolf. A more fitting retribution, I cannot imagine.” There’s mockery in his voice, an affected posh accent. Remus has gone perfectly still in his captors’ grip, no longer struggling, though his eyes do not leave Greyback’s face.

“Think about that, Remus Lupin,” says Greyback, stepping back, his hand falling to his side. “Consider your own father. We’ll be back for another chat sometime. Boys?”

And the werewolves are releasing him, leaving him slumped against the wall, turning as one for the stairs. Only as the sound of their footsteps fades does Remus let himself slide to the floor, tears flowing down his face. And as he does, Sirius understands, in a rush of Remus’s thoughts and his own, what it is Remus can’t say. Understands those years of wondering, of imagining the werewolf who must have bitten him, pitying him, imagining that he, like Remus, was a tormented outcast, dreading the full moon, fearing it — _understands_ , for the first time, that violent undertow of dread, that horror of transformation. Understands Remus, a little boy still, wondering wistfully if he might ever meet this other werewolf — to speak to him, to forgive him. Remus, growing older, panicked at the changes in his body and the changes in the wolf, wishing more than anything for someone older and wiser, someone who _knows_ what he’s going through, someone he can talk to, someone he can ask for advice. Wishing, imagining some father figure, like the father he’s never really had, not since he was five years old. There’s other things in there, too: a piercing loneliness, the contemplation of death, blood-stained full moon nights and mornings, and through it all, this talisman of Another, this thought of _I am not alone._

And then Remus is drawing back, disentangling his own thoughts from Sirius’s, and Sirius understands, and lets them go.

The Remus before him is shaking slightly, eyes dropped now that Sirius has released the spell, and Sirius wraps his arms around him and buries his face in his neck and holds him tight, tight, tight, willing Remus to _know_ , in his bones and his blood and his heart and his mind, that Sirius will never, ever, ever let him go.


End file.
